Quote

"The presentation of the theory of knowledge presents a peculiar difficulty. This difficulty is linguistic. Human language was a not made for speaking about knowledge; linguistic formality is not cognitive formality; there are infra-linguistic and supra-linguistic cognitive levels."

Monday, June 15, 2015

Polo's anthropology includes a discussion of "sentimentos humans". How should this be translated? In English, there are various works like "sentiments", "feelings", "emotions", and "affections".

An added complication is to identify how to translate this when speaking of "sentimientos" related to different aspects of the human being: her nature, her essence, the person.
Some possibilities that have been proposed are,

Proposal A:
Feelings of the human nature (feelings belong to the senses)
Emotions of the human essence (emotions belongs to anima)
Affections of the human person (affections belong to spirit)

Proposal B:
Passions of human nature
Emotions of human essence
Sentiments of the person
With "feelings" and "affections" being general.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

a) ground
The term "ground" has been suggested since this term has had quite common use in philosophical texts (in metaphysics and in logic) and is used in translations, for example of Heidegger's "Grund". Copleston also uses it, for example when discussing Jasper's existentialism.
An objection to the use of "ground" is that it sounds awkward to the ordinary reader. For example, the phrase, "seeking the ground of reality" might seem quite strange if one is not aware of the technical, metaphysical sense of the term.
Another objection is that "ground" is used in a mathematical and logical context.

b) foundation
The term "foundation" has been suggested, especially because it sounds more natural than the term "ground".
An objection to this is that "foundation" has too broad meaning and lacks the metaphysical connotations of terms like "ground" or "fundament".

c) fundament
The term "fundament" has been suggested and has some use in English philosophical works.
An objection to this is that this word is not of common use in translations of more metaphysical, ontological authors.

With this, I open the floor to discussion. I will add my thoughts after some comments have been made.